Dave Kaplan got his hands on the contract the Cubs signed with the rooftop owners. Dave Kaplan wrote a 2,000+ word essay breaking down the contract. I wrote a million-word fisking of his breakdown of the contract. THE CIRCLLLLLLLE OF LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE! Thanks to Section 242 for the tip.

The Muskbox is here to solve all of the Cubs’ third-base problems… or something. What that solution is, is hard to define. But if there’s one thing our resident librarian knows how to do, it’s define words. And phrases. And idioms. And shush people. And hand out detentions. And stamp books. And keep Ed Hartig fed and watered.

Have you lost weight since the first of the year? Have you switched to e-cigarettes like an utter douchebag? Are you on the wagon? Have you been practicing guitar every day? How are your resolutions going? Probably better than the Muskbox’s, assuming her resolution was to use the Muskbox for helpful informational purposes in 2014. The new year brings a new Box. Same as the old Box.

What a year the 2013 Cubs had! They avoided 100 losses, they fired their dull manager, they hired a new dull manager, and they watched Tony LaRussa get voted into the Hall of Fame. On this, the day after you drank alcohol and probably said something stupid to a hot girl, let’s give out some inaugural year-end awards. WELCOME TO THE ESSIES!

Hey, Al doesn’t have the market cornered on open letters to the Cubs front office that Theo Epstein will never read. Theo, you’ve done a lot of good in Chicago to this point. You’ve improved the team. You got rid of that alpaca manager. You haven’t acknowledged the idiot fan base that pays for season […]

This week’s Muskbox is filled with wonderful Cub fan stereotypes. There’s the fan arguing which bad catcher is less bad. There’s the guy obsessed with speed over all else. There’s a 500-pound monster. It’s not the Muskbox we want. It’s the Muskbox we need.

I had not been to a Cubs-Sox game since Cub Killer Jose Valentin hit a walkoff home run off even bigger Cub Killer Antonio Alfonseca TEN YEARS ago. Good lord, we’re all old now. Almost a decade later, I found myself back in U.S. Cellular Field last night.

The Muskbox is back just in time for. Well, for whatever. To celebrate Anthony Rizzo’s new (excellent) contract? Nah. To celebrate the return of the podcast? Nope. I’ll just let Carrie explain what we’re celebrating in this week’s Muskbox.

We have approximately three listeners to our Hangout/podcast, and we invited one of them to join us about ten seconds before we went live. So, he doesn’t have a microphone. Meaning there’s some ambient noise. But deal with it, because the content is actually halfway decent this week. We give him college advice and talk about high school baseball. That’s the level of baseball the Cubs are currently playing. Also, this opens the door wide open for guests. So, call me, Keeley Hazell.

Like the good old days, Dolan and I are flying duo in this week’s Hangout. The look of joy on Dolan’s face in the YouTube freeze frame is because he missed having me all to himself. We actually talk a lot of baseball for the first time in, like, ever. Mostly because there’s baseball to be talked about. We also talk a lot about MLB ’13: The Show and BioShock Infinite. Because both of those games are fucking awesome.